A report recently released by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) indicated, among other things, the importance of the convergence of Wi-Fi and Private 5G, the growth in adoption of Wi-Fi, and more. To learn more, IoT Insider Editor Caitlin Gittins spoke to Tiago Rodrigues, President and CEO of the WBA.

In his current role as President and CEO, Rodrigues said he saw more and more enterprises joining the Alliance, joining the ranks of their other members which range from large telecom operators to infrastructure equipment vendors – an interesting trend which demonstrated the investment and interest enterprises are showing in Wi-Fi.
“After Covid we started to see it becoming a reality,” explained Rodrigues. “At the same time, in the Alliance, we created a specific membership category for them. Both changes helped them to realise that they could have a role in WBA and become more vocal and active.”
The report the WBA released, ‘Private 5G and Wi-Fi Convergence Report: Phase 2 – Technical Considerations’ built upon the release of its phase 1 report, and highlighted the key role Wi-Fi infrastructure plays in improving 5G performance.
“Let’s call it a summary of the industry every year,” said Rodrigues. “The idea … is to have a summary to show the industry where Wi-Fi is going.”
The convergence of Wi-Fi and Private 5G
A key finding, the convergence of Wi-Fi and Private 5G, is the “first time” it has appeared in their report, Rodrigues said, although Private 5G has been on the Alliance’s radar for a few years.
“We see the demand from some of our members. A good example is HPE Aruba that has been investing a lot in Private 5G alongside Wi-Fi … We see that demand for more focus on the benefits of Wi-Fi and Private 5G.”
Other findings include “the growing confidence in investing in Wi-Fi. It has been a positive trend since Covid, growing and growing,” Wi-Fi 7, and the evolution of Wi-Fi as a technology.
Rodrigues added that thanks to this confidence, the number of deployments has grown in tandem, and there are ongoing discussions happening in different countries about how much spectrum to allocate for Wi-Fi. “A lot of that spectrum will be allocated to Wi-Fi. Of course, each country will have their own view, but in general a big part of [the] spectrum will be for Wi-Fi.”
Finally, the report uncovered a shift from mobile network operators (MNOs) towards using Wi-Fi as a complementary technology for where the network and coverage is patchy, or challenging.
As Rodrigues put it: “The mobile industry has their own challenges and Wi-Fi can be, in some cases, a super useful tool that they can use to augment capacity, coverage, and certain buildings and situations.”
Encouraging Wi-Fi adoption
One of the questions the WBA has been asking has been whether Wi-Fi and Private 5G are competing: “We want to position them as non-competing technologies that should work together,” he said. “Private 5G doesn’t have the same broad scope as Wi-Fi and will never be adopted as widely as Wi-Fi.”
A winning strategy for MNOs is to lean into Wi-Fi as a complementary technology for connectivity, he argued. “The margins and pressure on pricing is huge,” he stressed. “The investments have been huge on 5G and the returns have been very shy compared with the expectations … and everyone is starting to talk about 6G. The MNOs are in a situation that the type of volume and margins they have are not the same, so they should be smart and capitalise [on] any type of technology that can help them to save capex.”
In order to encourage the growth of the adoption of both technologies, the WBA have been working on establishing common identities for devices that can be used on Wi-Fi and Private 5G.
“Those types of scenarios in our view should be addressed. One of the items we have been working on a lot is how can an IT manager create one single identity that will be recognised in both technologies.”
The report also put forward proposals which the WBA said it believed would help to support the growth of both Wi-Fi and Private 5G, as well as accelerate adoption of Wi-Fi 7, and encourage OpenRoaming – a standard that strives to ensure devices have Wi-Fi connectivity at all times.
“We don’t share passwords for anything in our life, why should we do it on Wi-Fi?” Rodrigues summarised, in reference to the advantages OpenRoaming brings. “Why should we be on a Wi-Fi network that is not secure? It’s a consumer perspective that needs to be addressed, and OpenRoaming is one of the ways to try and crack that puzzle.”
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